


In the language of flowers

by Ptolemia



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, I used she/her pronouns cos my apprentice does but... she's nb......, Memory Loss, Other, Pre-Canon, asra and the apprentice were in a relationship pre memory loss, other than that its actually not super specific w/r/t the apprentice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 07:38:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14786246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ptolemia/pseuds/Ptolemia
Summary: After the apprentice looses her memories, Asra has to learn to adjust to the fact that she no longer remembers their past together. And yet, as it transpires, those memories might not be so permanently gone as they at first appear...





	In the language of flowers

**Author's Note:**

> me: hasn't written fic in over a year  
> me: has multiple wips which i've promised myself and others i'll actually finish  
> me: writes self-indulgent fic for a dating sim that only like five of my followers actually play
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

 

At first, of course, it’s torture.

 

She can’t even speak, not to begin with, nervous and wild-eyed and so totally lost that he can’t be sure that there’s anything of _her_ left, even. She doesn’t recognize her own name, let alone his. When he presses a bowl into her hands and tries to encourage her to eat she shies away from him, eyes wide and uncomprehending. But he perseveres, and as the days go by, he watches her returning to herself with irrepressible gladness in his heart. Things return to her piecemeal, seemingly with no particular rhyme or reason; she can write before she can speak, and sew before she can tie her shoelaces. Every day is a little victory. When she is finally able to brave the outside world, he guides her through the market with her hand clutched tight in his and trembling. She smiles up at him, nervous but proud, and Asra feels like he could move a mountain if it meant he could see that smile again.

 

It’s not long after that that she blacks out for the first time.

 

They’re in the kitchen, cooking dinner – or rather, Asra is cooking, and she’s perched on the counter-top watching him work – when it happens.

“This smells nice,” she says, gesturing at the stew bubbling on the stove. “It smells… I don’t know. Familiar, somehow.”

Asra hums, absent-mindedly catching her hand in his. “Mmm. I haven't cooked this in a while. Not since- well. Not since…” he feels his throat lock, the memory of her huddled and terrified as she crouched in the corner of the shop still fresh in his mind.

“Since we met?”

He snorts. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“You know, I don’t- I don’t really remember-” she wrinkles her nose, visibly frustrated. “I don’t know. A lot of stuff.”

“I know.” He squeezes her palm. “You’re doing so well, though. Go on, you said you remembered the stew? What else? Who were you with?”

This gives her pause for a moment. “I... I don't know. It's- I feel like  _you_  were there, only that can't be right. Can it? We were… I don’t know. It seems so familiar, somehow. It’s-” she sways slightly, raising her free hand to clutch her head, “It’s like a dream, I think, like I almost remember it but the more I try the more it slips away. Does that sound strange?”

He reaches out with his free hand and rests it lightly on her waist, steadying her. “Not at all. Perhaps it’s just going to take some time to get everything back. Maybe I can jog your memory. Last time I cooked this… hmm. It would have been at the house in Nopal, in the desert. Do you remember that?”

She shakes her head. “Nopal. No. Or maybe yes, or... I'm not sure. No, I don’t- I can’t-” She sways again, eyes fluttering alarmingly.

He frowns. “Are you alright?”

She doesn’t seem to hear him, her eyes glazed over and distant. “I- I don’t remember… I don’t- only it seems so close, like if I could just- just focus I could- if I-”

 

She slumps forward abruptly, and Asra braces to catch her before she slides off the counter-top. She doesn’t respond to her name, dead weight in his arms, so he lifts her up and carries her over to the couch as she babbles deliriously into his ear. When he touches her forehead, she feels like she’s burning up.

 

She comes round after a minute or two, and after a glass of water she seems to be herself again, but the incident repeats itself the next day, and the next, and with a sinking heart Asra realises that it’s remembering itself that makes her sick, or rather, _trying_ to remember. She’s getting better in so many ways, re-learning how to go to the shops and make small talk and even (under his guidance) use some of her magic. But where the past should be is just… blank. She doesn’t remember her family, or the plague, or the little clearing in the woods beyond the city where they used to trade lazy kisses by the campfire on summer nights. It’s selfish, maybe, but Asra thinks that might be the worst thing of all – that she doesn’t remember what they were, before it all went wrong. That she’s herself, mostly, only she’s a self that doesn’t remember him, that smiles politely and introduces herself to people as his apprentice. That the hand-holding amongst the crowds when they go out in the city is just a practicality now, and there are no secret smiles or stolen kisses when the baker pops behind the curtain of his stall to grab another pumpkin loaf.

 

So it’s still torture, really, just a different kind. And of course he’s achingly, brilliantly, desperately glad to have her here at all – that much goes without saying. But it’s an exquisite kind of agony to have her so close and so _herself_ and yet to have to pull back when his impulse says to kiss her, and to curl up every night in the same bed feeling like the inch of space between them might as well be a thousand miles. They wake up curled together in their old familiar tangle more mornings than not, and half-asleep in the early dawn light he sometimes forgets himself, moving to plant a kiss on her forehead, her lips, the gentle curve of her throat- only to freeze at the last moment, and steel himself, and move away. And so, with time, he gets really, _really_ good at untangling himself from her before she wakes; at eating breakfast in a hurry and heading out before he has to face her too-soft morning eyes. He really does have things to do, of course – places to go that she can no longer follow him, leads to track down that might fix whatever darkness still lingers in the city. But it’s true that perhaps he spends more time away than strictly necessary, because too much proximity is starting to make his chest ache. He tries not to read too much into little things – her delight when he returns from a trip away, the slightly too-long lingering of her hand on his when she passes him a book, the little private smiles she casts his way when nobody else is watching.

 

He’s imagining it, he tells himself. She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t see him as anything more than a teacher and a friend. And he can be that, a teacher and a friend, if that’s what she needs, without having to push his own feelings into things and muddy the water.

 

Like anything, learning not to hope gets easier with time. He settles into a routine which is… different to the old one, but comforting, in its own way. Wake up too close, untangle self from the bed, cook something, leave a bowl for her and head out to buy bread before opening the shop, or before head out of town if the need arises. Check on Muriel, if he has a spare moment. Scan the papers for any sign of Nadi waking up. Go back to the market meaning to buy milk, inevitably end up buying something frivolous, like a new scarf, or a peculiar-looking egg that Faust has decided looks tasty enough to try. And then, after than, come home, help her with dinner, and sleep.

 

He’s actually getting quite good at it when she manages to catch him completely off-guard. Retrospectively, he probably shouldn’t have been so surprised by that; it’s a skill she’s managed to hone down to a fine art over the years.

  

He swings the door open and throws his hat over the hook by the door, calling out a greeting as he does. She’s behind the table, sorting through the laundry with her nose wrinkled in concentration, clearly pre-occupied. As soon as she sees him, though, she springs up with a delighted smile and skirts round the table trailing at least three scarves behind her as she pulls him down into a hug.

 

“Where have you been?” she says, leaning back and giving him a quick once-over, gaze lingering on the scuffs on his shirt, a little graze half-healed on his cheek.

“Oh, you know… same as usual, really. Here and there.”

She sighs, but doesn’t push the point, and runs her fingers lightly over the mark on his cheekbone. “I hope you didn’t run into any trouble.”

He laughs, and shakes his head as he steps further into the room, unwinding his scarf and looping it over the back of a chair. “No, nothing so exciting, I'm afraid. Just an inconveniently placed tree.” 

“I missed you,” she says, resting a hand briefly on his shoulder before heading back over toward the laundry pile. “I’m glad you’re back.”

He smiles. “Me too.”

 

“And since you’re here”, she says, rifling through the laundry pile and holding aloft a rather nice silky green number for his inspection, “Your scarf or mine?”

Asra considers this for a moment. “Oooh, tricky. Green says you, but the fabric is a bit more me, don’t you think?”

“Agreed.” She shakes her head. “At some point we’ll just have to accept that the scarves are communal property.”

“You’re probably right. It’s that or we both have to consistently wear every single one of our own scarves all of the time, and that way there can’t be any confusion as to what belongs to who.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“What?! It might not be my finest idea, but you can’t deny it would _work_.”

 

She rolls her eyes and ignores him, which Asra has to concede is probably a pretty reasonable response. He settles himself into the chair nearest the fire and stretches out luxuriously, Faust uncurling herself from his shoulders and coiling down to rest on the arm of the chair. He pets her head absentmindedly, taking in the warmth and the familiarity of the room around him. It’s good to be home. Presently, his gaze falls on the table, where a little vase of garden flowers has been placed.

 

He frowns, standing up and moving closer to get a closer look. “Did you-” He pauses, unsure exactly what it is that he means to ask. “You picked these?” he says, after a moment's hesitation. It’s probably nothing, but… he reaches out to toward the flowers, lost in thought. She had always been far better with this sort of thing than him, with flower language and the like, so it’s her voice he hears in his mind as he traces his fingers over the blooms. _They’re in the garden, one of his robes draped loosely over her shoulders, his hand resting lightly in hers as she leads him through the flowerbeds, pointing out one bloom after another as she goes; “… Asters for patience, Yarrow for healing, Thyme for strength…” she glances over her shoulder at him, eyes alight, a smile dancing over her lips that makes his heart race, “and this one is Amaranth, for a love that never dies.” And then she laughs, and pulls him closer, eyes tender as she tucks a lock of hair behind his ears, “_ _Though, of course, in Praka the Amaranth can also mean-”_

 

Her voice – her real voice, that is, here in the room with him – jolts him out of his reverie. “Asra? Are you alright?”

He blinks, realizing that she must have been asking him something, and shakes his head as though trying to clear his ears of water. “Hmm? Oh, um, yes I… yes. I’m a little tired. That’s all.”

She doesn’t look convinced, brow furrowed, head cocked slightly to one side. Memory or no memory, she has always been far too good at reading him. “Is it the flowers? Should I not have picked them?”

“It, uh…” He shakes his head again, pulling one hand back from the blooms and trying to loosen the white-knuckle grip his other has on the back of the chair in front of him as he straightens himself up into an approximation of normality. She doesn’t remember, he reminds himself – not the flower meanings, not that day in the garden, not _anything_. And yet, thinks some little traitor part of his mind, and yet she chose these ones, all the same. Doesn’t that tell you something? He clears his throat, aware that she’s still watching him, frowning slightly. “No,” he says, “No it’s not that, it’s… it’s nothing. They’re very nice. They’re lovely.”

She doesn’t look convinced. “I’m sorry, I should have asked you first, shouldn’t I? There was just… I don’t know. Something about them that made me think of you.”

 

Asra’s head jolts up at that, catching her eye with a slightly frantic gleam in his eye. “Of me?”

“I… yes. There was just something about them that seemed...” she tails off with a shrug. “I don’t know. Appropriate. It’s probably silly, huh?”

“Perhaps,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. His chest aches. “I wonder if… hmm. Do you know their names?”

“What?”

“The flowers. Do you know their names?”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so, although- well, the big ones are some sort of daisy, right?”

“Asters,” he murmurs, “They’re- well. It doesn’t matter.”

 

She places her hand over his and shifts a little closer, concern evident in her searching gaze. “Look, I know it isn’t my place, but… are you sure you’re alright, Asra?”

“I’m fine,” he says, but she’s still watching him, stroking her thumb gently over the back of his hand. And it’s- it’s too much. He really, really needs some space right now. He needs to think. He needs-

“You just look a bit out of sorts, that’s all. Maybe you’re coming down with something, I should-”

 

He pulls his hand away, flashing her a reassuring smile as he goes to grab his hat and scarf and throw them on. “I think I just need a bit of fresh air.”

She sighs, but doesn’t argue. “Alright. But… don’t stay out too late if you can help it.”

“Promise,” he says, swinging the door open and stepping out into the rapidly darkening night air. “I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.” And then the door swings shut behind him, and he’s off.

 

He makes it a few blocks away before the tightness in his chest relents enough to let him breathe a little, and he sinks down to sit on the floor, back to the wall of a now-empty bookshop. He sits, and he breathes, and he feels- well, it hurts, of course, the remembering and the not remembering and the unfamiliar distance between them, only now he’s away from the immediacy of her presence it’s sinking back the familiar dull background ache. And behind it is something else, something light and fluttering and new. She doesn’t remember the names of those flowers, or what they mean, because she doesn’t remember _anything_ , and yet…

 

Courage, and healing, and patience. A love that never dies. A coincidence, he tells himself, firmly, but the lightness in his chest doesn’t listen. The feeling is so unfamiliar that for a moment he can’t quite recognise it, but for the first time since it all went wrong he begins to feel the gentlest bubbling hope. He tilts his hat back and grins, staring up toward the narrow patch of sky between the rooftops above.

 

“Yarrow and Aster and Amaranth and Thyme,” he whispers, eyes glittering up at the stars.

 

The stars, for their part, glitter back, and say nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda defaulted to she/hers pronouns here because that's what my apprentice tends to use (she's nb and honestly not too fussed with whatever but mostly ends up goin with she/hers), but now I think about it I sort of wish I'd used they/theirs... I feel like it would kinda make more sense since as it turns out there's actually nothing super specific abt my apprentice in here & I like to keep things funky n inclusive... u feel me. If I get round to it I might go thru and redo this with they/theirs and just post it as a second chapter tbh. 
> 
> Also, the flower meanings here are, y'know, as legit as flower meanings ever are but ofc most flowers have loads of different 'meanings' and half of it is just made up Victorian nonsense anyway lmao. So take it all with a grain of salt. And while we're talking flowers, I wanna acknowledge that as an actual bunch of flowers this combo would look kinda wacky but hey, it be that way sometimes. I think you could make it look decent for a 'stuff I found in the garden' bunch, but it's defo not Proper Floristry by any means. 
> 
> Also also - I have no idea if what I /think/ the memory loss stuff means is gonna get jossed next update, so I've tried to keep it vague as possible but, uh... yeah I mean if you're reading this a couple months down the line I have no clue if it'll still fit in with canon, lol.
> 
> Also also also - the Arcana & it's characters ofc belong to the creators and all that jazz. 
> 
> Also also also also - if you're here because you subscribed for Ghostbusters or Star Wars, I /promise/ I will finish those wips. Um. At some point. Hopefully.


End file.
